


From the Underworld

by Anais (phoebesmum)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Genre: Family, Gen, Music, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-06
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/Anais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a Colonial legend, the musician Bard has turned his back on fame and now lives an anonymous life as a Viper mechanic. Apollo's friendship can bring him back into the daylight, but at what cost to himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Underworld

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in _Streets and Stars_ , published by The Richard Hatch Fan Fellowship, October 1989. There are no prizes for guessing who the band's based on.

The Viper glided to a halt in the landing bay. Apollo eased back in his seat for a micron, adjusting, stretching cramped limbs, letting the battle-alert tension drain from his body, then reached out to unseal the canopy. He climbed from the cockpit with the ease of long ( _overlong!_ ) practice and slid to the deck, nodding a greeting to the ground crewman who stood by, waiting to take the ship over for its routine maintenance scan. The technician smiled in reply but didn't stop to speak, and Apollo turned away toward the turbolift. He was tired, his mind numbed with the endless centars of silence and solitude, his eyes filled with blackness and with the faraway shining of starlight. He needed a while alone, apart, to unwind, to adjust to reality; the fleet seemed somehow distant and dreamlike to him now.

As he slowly crossed the bay, a sound intruded into his dulled mind; a faltering thread of a melody that wound through his thoughts, slowly enwrapping and overwhelming the everyday, routine noises of voices and machinery that cluttered the air. Without conscious intent, Apollo found his feet turning toward the sound, tracing it to its source.

He knew the song; everybody knew the song. He'd sung it himself often enough.

>   
> _Wings of silver, wings of fire …_   
> 

The warriors' anthem. Untried cadets sang it sentimentally, picking out the chords on a half-learned liot, or hunting the melody one-fingered amid the keys of a celesta; seasoned warriors sang it through in their heads as they sped through the indifferent stars for what always might be the last time, whilst old, battle-torn veterans who would never fly again heard it played and had to turn away. It said it all: a few simple words, trite, even banal when written down and read coldly, a simpler melody; but together they melded into a vision, jewel-clear, jewel-bright, or what it meant to be a warrior, of what it was to fly: of honour and duty, and of the pure, cold beauty of the stars; of the dream that sent young men out into the unknown, to fight, even to die, all for …

… for what?

>   
> _Blaze, my heart …_   
> 

For survival; that could never be denied, never forgotten. But there was more to it than only survival, than this bare existence that could only by default be called life; so much more unspoken. Even after all these yahrens, Apollo could not have put into words what it all meant, what it was all for. Certainly not right at this micron, when nothing seemed very real in any case.

>   
> _My soul's desire …_   
> 

 

The singing had trailed away, the song incomplete. There was movement over to his right; Apollo glanced across. A Viper hung there in a cradle, its control panel open, the blackened scar across one silvery fin telling its own tale. A technician was working on it, gently probing with a laser torch into the network of slender silver filaments, fusing severed wires together. He must have heard Apollo's approach, for he glanced up, dull-eyed, and said, tiredly, "Y'need help, pilot?"

It wasn't the way most people would have spoken to a warrior, still less to a squadron leader, the _Galactica_ 's flight commander, but Apollo barely noted it. Staring, still caught up in the dream, he said unbelievingly, " _Bard?!_ "

The band was Orpheus, and that was the name tagged onto their disks; Bard their leader, and he the one for whom the audiences chanted. But to the fans, the true believers, he was simply 'the man'.

There had always been music in the Colonies, and even before; the tradition stretched back to the dawn of human memory. But Orpheus was different, and the difference was Bard, whose music resonated in the human soul, whose words were torn directly from the human heart. Young, old, it didn't matter; his music was a universal language that all could understand and few, if any, could resist. He and his band had been a legend throughout the star systems before the destruction. The night of what should have been the peace treaty they'd been playing a huge, free, open-air concert in People's Park in Puerta Libra, Bard's home town. They had been halfway through the first set when the Cylon ships had come. Amidst the explosions and the screaming and the panic they had stood calmly, finishing the number even after the sound and video relays had been knocked out so that no-one could hear them. And then they had vanished, presumed killed, as so many others had vanished, died, in those days of living hell that had sprung from the Cylons' treason. No-one knew for sure, of course, but in the confusion … anything could have happened.

And now Apollo stood in the _Galactica_ 's landing bay, face to face with a legend, knowing the man from disk sleeves and vidscans and from a few distant glimpses from the thick of a crowded auditorium. The heavy, dark, waving hair was a little greyer, a little longer, the bones of the face worn a little finer, the eyes hollowed and shadowed with pain, but no believer, having once seen the man, could ever again mistake him. Off-balance, feeling as though he had taken one unexpected step too many across the borders of another world, Apollo said again, "Bard?"

The technician's face closed in on itself, and he started to turn away/ Apollo moved in on him, grabbing a slumping shoulder. "What're you doing here?" he demanded, still not certain that the face he recognised was real and before him, not a figment of an overactive imagination, a delusion brought on by too many long centars alone in empty space. "Why - ?"

Bard snatched free and swung around. "What's it look like I'm doin'?" he countered. "I'm fixin' circuits."

Reflexively, Apollo stepped back. For a micron, something very like pure hatred had sparked within the lustreless eyes. Uncertainly, he said, "You were singing …"

"There a law against it?" the man snapped. "You oughta know – _warrior_." Then the fire went out and he sighed, his body untensing. "Everyone sings. That song most of all. Seems like I hear it 'most every day."

"No-one sings it the way you do," Apollo said quietly.

A shrug, dismissive, disdainful. "I got better stuff to do now. Which'd you prefer, warrior – me to sing songs, or to fix your ship so you can still fly after you got it messed up?"

"Is that a serious question?"

"I'm serious. What's more important to you, warrior? Music? Or stayin' alive?"

"But no-one but you can write the songs," Apollo said. "Isn't _that_ important?"

Bard's eyes met his, bleak and empty. "Not any more," was all he said, but Apollo sensed the dumb, aching agony behind it. Bard had been wedded to his music; his family, his band. He had lost it all; had come to this. Apollo had been there too, known that same pain; he'd lost lovers, friends, family. His wife.

But he could fight back. Maybe that was what made the difference.

"You're alive," he said. "Doesn't that count for something? You can't just opt out of life."

"I'm livin'." The singer's expression remained inflexible. "I'm payin' my dues – more'n if I was still singin'." Unexpectedly, his eyes softened. "You gotta be practical, warrior. Sentiment's fine, nostalgia's fine, when there's a time for them. Right now …" He shook his head sadly. "Right now, there's no time. No time for nothin'."

He spoke no less than the truth; but not the whole truth. Apollo tried one last time. "We could make time. People miss you, Bard."

The other man turned back to his work. "My disks are all in the libraries. I'm retired. Now, I got a job to do – okay, pilot?"

It was a dismissal, as positive as any the Commander might have given, and as final. Defeated, Apollo nodded, and left the man alone.

But he couldn't leave it there. Through all that day and through the night, lying wakeful in his bed, the songs ran through his mind and, with them, the memories each held: melding, merging into dream, but remaining perfect, crystallised.

 _The concert at the Academy: 'The Chosen Few', 'Promise of Tomorrow', 'Millennium Dreams', 'Hearts on Fire' … Marta, dancing until her feet bled, laughing, refusing to leave until it was over … he'd had to carry her out of the park in his arms, out away from the bright lights and the noise, away from the crowds …_

 _I thought I'd never let her go …_

 _Zac, ten yahrens old, stumbling across the notes of 'Shelter From the Storm': "I can't reach this chord, how does he reach this chord, what's he have, double-opposed thumbs or something?" Their mother, leaning over him, setting his fingers on the right strings, showing him the fingering; Adama, home on furlon, wincing at a flat note and insisting on retuning the liot to his own perfectly-pitched ear …_

 _Quarrelling with Marta, standing back in explosive silence as she packed her bags and left; playing 'Winds of Change' over and over for centars, listening, remembering, wishing things could have been different … finally swallowing bruised pride and deciding to call; going past the open window, looking out into the street and seeing her walking slowly back …_

 _Athena at sixteen, 'borrowing' her older brother's disks for a party of her own, one of her friends breaking the crystalplayer, the two of them giving up outings for a sectar to pay for the repair before Apollo got home from patrol; she'd come to meet him at the spacedrome and poured out a white-faced confession there, brought him the man's newest disk as a coming-home present: 'Run to the Sea'; he still had the disk, all the man's disk's, somewhere among his few treasured personal possessions …_

 _Marta again, in their shared apartment, insisting on sticking up a holo of the man in the kitchenette: "But he's so gorgeous, Apollo!" And himself, dryly: "Thanks, sweetheart, and I love you too." But the picture had stayed; blackened and curled at the edges, it had still clung to what remained of the wall, that night when he had gone back to find her …_

 _… and had found her …_

That memory woke him as it always did, always would.

 _I can't just let it be._

The man was a part of his past, a part of all their pasts, an important one. And, so long as they had a future, a part of that future, too. There was little enough to celebrate in the fleet, little enough of beauty or joy; the people's souls, their hearts, were hungry for music and the dreams encapsulated in that music, the dreams and the magic that Bard and Bard alone could weave from empty air.

How could he deny them the gift he had to give?

*

Off-duty again a few days later, Apollo returned to the bay and sought out the technician. Bard might have been expecting him; when he saw him he only gave a resigned shrug and set his laserwelder carefully down by his side.

"I knew you weren't the kind to let it alone," he greeted the warrior, and his mouth stretched into a tight line that might once have been a smile. "You were a believer?"

Apollo nodded. "As far as I could be, yes."

"The Academy." Bard's voice held bitterness. Or was it only regret? "Yeah. I guess that always had to come first."

"You played there," Apollo reminded him. "In the grounds – the yahren I graduated." Memory tugged at him again: _Marta – oh, Marta!_ "You played _Hearts on Fire_ like we'd never heard it before …"

Bard smiled faintly, distantly. "'We'?"

"My girl …"

"Gone," the man said softly; not a guess. "Gone, like all the others."

"Yeah." Apollo looked into the man's eyes. "I found her – afterward. But that's not the way I remember her. I remember her the way she was the night you played; I'll always remember her that way. That's what you gave to us, Bard: a kind of magic. And we need that magic now more than ever. We need you, your music. Some of us have our memories, and maybe that should be enough for us, but others don't. And the kids who've never seen you play, never heard you – don't you think they deserve to know how it was, how it can be?"

Slowly, Bard shook his head. "I've told myself – I should try. But I've lost heart, warrior. All those songs about life and hope and fighting back, about building a new world out of nothin' … I just don't believe in it any more, any of it. And if I don't believe it, then how can I sing it?"

"You've stopped writing?"

Bard looked at the warrior and grinned lopsidedly, without humour. Standing, he crossed to a nearby locker, pulling it open. Scraps of paper flew out, rustling to the floor; the space inside was crammed with them. Apollo looked a question; the other man held out a page to him. "See for yourself," he said.

Apollo took the page. It held perhaps a dozen lines, and half of those scratched out, a stillborn embryo of a song. He looked again into the haunted eyes.

"I've tried," Bard said. "I have tried, warrior. I'm not the coward you maybe think I am. My music was everything to me. I thought – I thought, even if I couldn't sing it no more, at least I could write the songs so's others could sing. But I can't. The words won't come, the music won't. There's nothin' there. That part of me's dead, warrior, dead and gone, and I just don't think I can get it back. Maybe," he added softly, "maybe I don't even want to."

Apollo kept his voice quiet, gentle, understanding. "Why? Why, Bard?"

The man only looked at him, his face unreadable, then bent to regather the papers and stuff them back into the locker. He came back to sit by Apollo, fingers flexing and unflexing nervously around drawn-up knees. "Look," he finally said. "What do they sing? All of them? What is it you hear all the time, what do they even teach them in instructional period these days?"

Apollo opened his mouth to answer, but the man carried straight on.

" _Wings_. They all sing _Wings_. The warrior anthem. I wrote that. They sing it as they go out to die; they used to carve the words on warriors' deathstones. How it is to be a warrior, what it means, how it feels. And when the Cylons came, where was I? On stage, singing. Not fighting – singing. Singing while the audience ran and died, while the band stood behind me and fell and died too …" He stopped; his eyes were tightly closed, as though in pain. At last he opened them again; whispered, "I'm not a warrior. What right do I have? How can I write songs to send them out there, our kids, send them out to fight, die? Who am I to preach to them like some kind of frakking god … oh, god." His voice was dull, drained of life and hope. "I don't want to sing any more. God, I don't want it. I got nothin' more to give, warrior. So I do what I can instead."

"We all do," Apollo said mechanically, "what we can." He looked down at hands clenched in impotent fury; frustration at things lost that could not be regained, a grief that could not be consoled. "Whatever we can."

Bard turned dull eyes to him. Then, reluctantly, he smiled a little. "I got no cause to mourn," he said. "I had enough in those last ten yahren to last me the rest of my days. And there's my disks, like I said. Warrior, I wish I had something more for you, more'n you can know – but that's all there is. It's all I've got."

"Then that'll have to be enough," Apollo said. "For now. You do what you think you have to, Bard – but I _am_ a warrior. I can fight, and I will. I'll be back." He climbed to his feet, looking down into the other man's upturned face, the eyes that were shadowed by the guilt of a million innocent deaths, and said again, like a vow, "I'll come back."

He had seen that look before, had known that same emptiness. There was nothing to be said when a man lost hope, nothing to be done; the only way to fight it was to fight it yourself. And how can you fight if you don't care whether you win or you lose?

*

It was the beginning of a strange, nebulous friendship, its limits and terms never firmly defined, yet fully understood on both sides. Apollo would come to the bay always; Bard never stepped away from his own environment, as though afraid that the world beyond would claim him for its own and never allow him to return to the shelter of his obscurity. The warrior's visits were of necessity irregular, but Bard was invariably unsurprised to see him, accepting his presence as natural. They would talk, though of neither the past nor the future, only of such small matters as could do no harm; yet there was a harmony, an understanding between them, so that their silences, though often long, were never uncomfortable. Apollo did not mention Bard's music again; but nor did he forget it, ever.

It became a source of considerable amusement to the squadron, their Captain and his occasional unexplained absences. Speculation was rife, and rumour wild and improbable. Apollo let them talk, and listened to the stories, faithfully reported to him in detail by Starbuck, with interest and a certain sense of incredulity.

"I should only be so lucky," he said once. "Where _do_ they think I'd get that sort of energy? Let alone the cubits?!"

Starbuck only grinned. "Well," he said, inarguably, "you _are_ the Captain!" Starbuck, of course and as usual, knew everything without being told, but enjoyed listening to the speculation too well to spoil it with the far less exotic reality. Apollo, for his own part, respected Bard's need for anonymity. Besides, he enjoyed the stories too.

And so it was for the best part of a yahren. Life in the fleet pursued its predictable round, with now and then some more or less dramatic turn of event to break the monotony. Battles were fought and won, new worlds charted and explored; supplies ran low and had to be renewed, tempers ran high and had to be placated. There were deaths, peaceable and otherwise, and births, although these were few. The Cylons seemed lost; other dangers took their place, and were overcome or brought to terms, as best the Colonials could defend themselves. Then the Cylons reappeared, and one more battle was fought, and after that it seemed that they were truly gone, this time forever – although, remembering the last time, no-one ever quite dared believe. The warriors patrolled; the civilians prayed. Life went one.

It was in Life Centre that the change began.

Apollo's hands were burned, raw and weeping. His control panel had blown a circuit as he brought his Viper in to land, and the resultant powershock had flung him violently back in his seat. The ship had slewed dangerously across the bay as its pilot lost consciousness, and only the rapid efficiency of the ground crew and the fact that they systems had been close to full shutdown had averted disaster.

"We've been getting a lot of cases like this," Cassiopeia was saying worriedly as she sprayed the blistered skin with a painkiller. "What's causing it, Apollo?"

He shrugged noncommittally. "Nothing, really," he said. "Coincidence." Which was a lie. The fact was that the Vipers in service in the fleet had been in use far too much for far too long and were beginning to show the strain – which, Apollo reflected, was true of more than just the Vipers. But there was no point in saying so; Cassi would only worry still more and, since there was nothing that could be done that was not already being done and proving ineffectual, worry was pointless.

Cassiopeia looked at him closely, hearing the lie in his voice, but she was intelligent enough and worked so closely parallel to the military as to be able to guess not only the truth but also Apollo's reasons for not confiding in her and, further, to know to say nothing. By such small deceptions are our lives made tolerable.

"I might have known it would happen to _you_ ," was all she said. "I'm so used to seeing you in here, I start to worry when you stay away for more than a couple of days."

"I do it on purpose," Apollo said calmly, back on familiar ground. "It's the only way I can get close to you without getting Starbuck jealous."

"I wish," she said, but didn't specify what she wished. She smoothed out the edges of the skingraft to bond them, and watched as Apollo flexed first one hand and then the other to test the meld. "Okay?"

"Good as new," he told her. "Thank you, Cassi." He looked up at her; his gaze flickered across the room, held, and his eyes widened. "Lords of Kobol …"

"What - ?" Cassiopeia looked over her shoulder to see what had caught his attention. Doctor Paye stood there, talking to one of the lab technicians: a tall man, big, with skin so dark that he must have been of pure Virgon blood; dressed in fleet uniform, he was nonetheless individual, unforgettable and unmistakeable.

"Is that - ?" Apollo sounded dazed. "Is that who I think it is?" he finally managed.

"If you think it's Negus, then yes, it is," Cassiopeia said. "He works in the haemogrouping lab – has done for a long time now, he came and volunteered not long after …" Like most of the Colonial refugees, Cassiopeia never mentioned the destruction by name. "It was what he trained for before he met Bard and joined Orpheus. Did you not know?"

"I didn't even know that he'd survived," Apollo said, still not certain; a sense of déjà vu caught dizzyingly at him. "No, I didn't know. I wonder …"

There was a long silence.

"This seems to be your day for half-formed thoughts," Cassiopeia dryly observed. "What do you wonder?"

 _I wonder if Bard knows?_ Apollo thought, but did not say. He looked up at the medtech and smiled disarmingly. "Nothing," he said. "It's not important. Thank you, Cassi."

The woman watched, resigned, as he crossed the room and the doors drew to behind him. "Any time, Captain," she murmured to the air. "You're welcome." She sighed to herself; she was accustomed to only ever learning part of a story. "I guess I'll never know."

*

Negus was used to being recognised. He had been a major celebrity back on the Colonies, but, once seen, he would still have been difficult to forget even without that advantage. He met Apollo's rather diffident approach placidly, neither taking offence nor showing the least surprise, and he said exactly what Bard had said.

"You were a believer?"

Apollo said again what he had said to the man. "As far as I could be, for the Academy. But that's not why – I mean, I'm not – " He felt awkward, intrusive. The big man sensed it.

"Is something wrong, Captain? I assure you, I don't object to your speaking to me – but you do seem to be a little unclear of your motives."

Apollo nodded. "I am. It's because they're not my own motives, and I'm not sure if I have the right to say to you what I'm going to." He hesitated, then said abruptly, before he could regret his decision, "Did you know that Bard is still alive? That he's here, aboard the _Galactica_?"

The other man hadn't known; that was clear before he spoke, in the wave of emotions that crossed his face. "On this ship?" he echoed, finally, and, when Apollo nodded, "Doing what?"

"Viper maintenance."

"Ah." Negus considered, his self-possession regained. "Yes, that makes sense. He always did have a flair for mechanics – he was one of those who can read a microcircuit panel as easily as you or I could read a page of print. Some people can, you know." He looked keenly at the warrior. "So he's keeping busy and making himself useful. That's good. But he's isolating himself – and that's bad; very bad. Not just because it's a waste of his talent, although it is that, but because of the harm he must be doing to himself. Will you take me down there?"

"If you'll come with me," Apollo said, and together they walked along the corridor toward the turbolifts. "Do you mind me asking – the rest of the band - ?"

"By some kind of miracle," Negus said, "most of us still live. I can only assume and give thanks for the fact that the lords of creation are music lovers, but not sufficiently so as to wish to call us to perform for them before our time. Saskia and Devlin have not been seen since that last concert. The rest of us not only live on, but Rossignol and Daleth and I were all evacuated aboard the same shuttle."

Apollo was silent for a micron, remembering with regret the flamboyant, brilliantly gifted celestinist and the reputedly insane rhythmer. "And the music?" he finally asked.

"Also lives on. Things have not been easy. Intership travel being so limited, there have been problems in all of us getting together for rehearsals, besides which, surprisingly enough, there is a notable lack of musical instruments in this fleet, for hire, loan, or love; even the legendary, or so I would like to think, name of Orpheus cannot unlock _every_ door. Still, we persevere. The gods do seem to be with us; at any rate, they sent us a new celestist even better than Saskia, as well as Pulsar, whose name you'll know – ?"

"He was supposed to be the strongest rhythmer in the business a few yahrens back," Apollo confirmed, impressed. "The gods have _got_ to be on your side."

"M'm," Negus agreed. "But, as I said, we still have our problems. Another one," he continued, "has been our lack of new material … and of a strong lead singer."

"Do you think Bard will join you – come out of hiding?" Apollo asked, daring to hope for a micron that the problem he had set himself would be so easily resolved. Hope faded as Negus shook his head.

"I think not. You see, Captain, I understand his motives." They had reached the turbolifts; Apollo pressed the request button to take them to the maintenance section of the landing bays. "I'm only a musician; I'm not greatly troubled by the strength of my finer feelings. But Bard is also a poet, and that gift has a price. No-one can claim that their own pain is any greater or any lesser than another's, for no two individuals will react in the same way to any one event. What happened on our worlds affected everyone. You, Captain: you suffer your own grief, your own losses; to a lesser extent you suffer those of your friends and, to a still lesser extent, the losses of your colleagues, acquaintances; and so it continues, becoming more and more distilled, to the griefs and losses of the nameless, faceless millions – but the pain fades, becomes unimaginable with distance." His voice grew stronger, underscoring what it was he had to say. "So it is with you, or with me, or with almost any of us. But for Bard, Bard with his empathic understanding of the human experience, Bard the eyewitness to the secret heart of us all – to Bard, each individual sorrow is as real, as sharp, as unbearable as his own, and the weight of that burden is unimaginable, must be intolerable. No man could have borne it; and the very sensitivity that births that awareness renders him ever more vulnerable."

Apollo said nothing for a few moments, taking in what the other had said, turning it over in his mind. "I can't put myself in his place," he finally said. "I don't have that depth of feeling. But it seems to me that to be able to write about the experience might act as a kind of therapy, a kind of catharsis. Locking it all away and hiding from it can only make it worse." He grimaced deprecatingly. "Forgive the amateur psychology, but I had to listen to a lot of this stuff myself when I went through a bad patch a while back."

Negus looked sidelong at him. "And did it help?" he enquired gently.

"Surprisingly, yes. It took a time, but in the end …" Apollo looked up into the big man's face. "Time may have been all I needed. It may be all that Bard needs, but somehow I don't think so." The lift stopped. Apollo opened the doors, and the two men stepped out. "I think that seeing you will help."

"I think so too," Negus said seriously, "or else I would not have asked you to bring me." He looked around the bay curiously, its vast, empty spaces that the constant traffic of ships scarcely began to fill, the vaster space distantly visible beyond the force field barriers; so familiar to Apollo that he barely observed it any more, to a civilian it was off-limits, a fascinating glimpse of a different life. "Where - ?"

Apollo steered him in the direction of the maintenance hangars. "I'll see you in and then wait outside," he said. "You'll have a lot to say, I imagine, and I don't want to intrude."

Negus smiled, warmly and for the first time. "You're very considerate, Captain. I appreciate it. Thank you."

*

A wreck of a Viper hung in the cradle above the maintenance bay. Negus looked up at it in distant wonder and shook his head thoughtfully.

"One doesn't realise," he said. "We hear on the IFB about what you people do, but without a basis for comparison it means very little. To see something like that – it brings the reality home with something of a shock."

A shadow crossed Apollo's face. "It was a conscious decision on the part of the Council."

"To underplay the hazards involved?"

"To cushion our people against a full understanding of the situation we're in. They thought to do otherwise would create a mood of despair, fear, panic – a case of ignorance being bliss."

"Perhaps they have a point." Negus glanced at the captain. "You disagree?"

"I don't think you gain anything by dishonesty. Instead we have apathy, even hostility. The people take us for granted, assume that we'll always be there, always be able to protect them, and they resent us when we fail them. I think they forget that we're only human too." He sighed. "We exist to serve, I know, and to protect; but I know what my warriors go through out there, and sometimes it makes me angry …" He shook the thought away. "Never mind. That's just the way it is, that's what we have to live with."

The other man looked up again at the Viper's mangled landing gear. "Did the pilot survive?"

"He survived," Apollo said grimly. "That's my ship." He walked on quickly before the big man could react, and knocked on the door of the maintenance supply room. "Bard?"

The technician opened the door. Seeing Apollo he smiled tiredly, the emptiness behind his eyes momentarily reforming into the shadow of a memory of something more.

"Always in a hurry, warrior. I know my team's good, but even we couldn't fix your Viper this fast – not after what you did to it."

"Did I say a word?" Apollo protested. "In any case, that's not why I'm here. I brought a friend to see you."

Bard's face tightened and he stepped back a pace. "A friend? Warrior, I don't – "

Apollo put out a hand to stop him. "Don't. Don't jump to conclusions, don't speak too soon." He stepped away as Negus caught up with him. "I said, a friend."

The big man said quietly, "Bard."

The technician's eyes flew to Negus's face, grew huge and dark with disbelief. His lips formed the other man's name, but no sound came.

Negus took a slow step forward, his hands held out; another. He said again, "Bard?"

Bard stood still, his body frozen into effigy, his face blank, expressionless. He might have died in that instant; only the trembling of his hands betrayed him. For a micron nobody moved, barely breathed, the tension in the air almost visible.

 _Oh, gods_ , Apollo thought, _please let me have done the right thing!_

The silence seemed to stretch out for centars, days, an eternity.

Suddenly the singer's throat loosened, strangling on a sob; he tore away from his stillness, flung himself into the big man's arms, and buried his face against his friend's shoulder. " _Negus?!_ "

Still standing in the doorway, Apollo watched as Negus held the other man protectively, the singer seeming frail as a child against the massive chest. The big man glanced back for a micron, sparing Apollo a reassuring smile, and his lips moved soundlessly: _he'll be okay now_.

Apollo nodded understanding and relief, and turned away, leaving the other two to their reunion. The door closed behind him and he leaned back against it, untensing piece by piece. He realised for the first time, surprised, that his own hands were trembling as badly as Bard's. He spread them out before himself, watching as they slowly steadied, stilled. He had not realised quite how much this meeting had meant to him, how anxious he had been, and he wondered at it, gradually realising something he had not seen before: that Bard had become more to him than a onetime idol, more than a passing acquaintance. The man had become a friend, and a close one – a closeness that neither of them had ever intended, deep and binding.

 _Soulmates_ , Apollo thought wryly, remembering how in his younger, more sentimental days he had often listened to Bard's lyrics and heard them as reflections of his own innermost thoughts and beliefs. That was a part of the poet's art, he knew that now; but still he heard the echoes.

Echoes …

There were voices echoing a little way off, a confused babble of them, both adults' and children's. An instructional outing, Apollo guessed. He pulled himself upright and drifted over to join the group.

"Captain Apollo." Siress Alyssa was in charge of the visit; as the Council of the Twelve's newly appointed Education Prime, she took her responsibilities deeply to heart, spending as much time in the fleet's many makeshift classrooms as she did in the Council Chamber. She greeted him warmly and, he thought, with a hint of relief.

"Siress." He looked around the small band of the _Galactica_ 's children, greeting them by name. "Idris, Loma, Pyrrha … isn't Boxey with you?" he asked the Siress, who cast her eyes significantly heavenward and looked back over her shoulder.

"Boxey!" she yelled. "Anansï – _will_ you keep up?!" The habitual calm of her voice was noticeably frayed around the edges, and Apollo suppressed a smile. Evidently the Education Prime had as much trouble coping with the two liveliest children in the class as any other instructor – himself included.

He said gravely, "I apologise for my son, Siress."

"So you should," Siress Alyssa said darkly; but her face had set too firmly into lines of good humour over the yahrens, and there was laughter in her eyes now. The Council was improving slowly, Apollo reflected, gradually becoming more approachable, more human, as they came to terms with the situation in which they and the people of the fleet now all must live and abandoned their petty power politics. His sister insisted it was due to the number of women who had been elected Councillors recently … which, he thought, might not be far wrong; after all, the Council which had so disastrously voted in favour of the peace treaty with the Cylons had been the first one in a millennium to be one hundred percent male.

Boxey ran up at that moment, his small partner in crime in hot pursuit, and launched himself bodily at his father. "Dad!"

Apollo staggered, regained his balance and his breath, if not his dignity, and gave his son the hug he was demanding. "I just saw you this morning, Boxey, not a secton ago – calm down. What've you and Anansï been doing?"

"Just looking," Boxey said unconvincingly, and slid out of Apollo's arms. Anansï clamoured to take his place; Apollo scooped the tiny girl up automatically, and she clung to him, crawlon-like.

"Just looking, huh?" he asked the child, who was immediately stricken by coyness, hid behind her hair and refused to answer.

"And talking to some of the ground techs," Boxey added. "That was all – honest."

"Uh-huh." Apollo was unconvinced, but had no doubt but that the truth would come to light eventually – whether sooner or later would depend on how bad it was. "it'd better have been," he added severely. "Junior warriors behave themselves in class – or else."

"Or else what?" Boxey wanted to know.

"Or else they don't get to grow up into senior warriors," Apollo told him. He steered Boxey gently back to Siress Alyssa's side, and set Anansï down beside her. "Run along now. Try and stand still long enough to learn something, huh?"

Boxey gave him a gap-toothed and deceptively angelic grin. Apollo looked at him suspiciously, wondering what his son had really been up to this time.

"Brave lady, Siress," he commented.

The Siress's expression blended forbearance with martyrdom. "Aren't I, though?" she agreed, and began herding her charges on. "Come along, children … just you wait 'til the next parents' meeting, Captain …"

Apollo laughed, and stood back to let them pass. Boxey and Anansï walked backward for some way, waving, until firmly instructed to turn around. Apollo dutifully waved back, hoping devoutly that no-one was watching him.

Footsteps rang behind him and he hurriedly let his hand drop. As the last stragglers in the line of children were lost to view around a corner, he turned away and found Bard waiting quietly at his side.

"Apollo?" The man reached out tentatively; the tips of his fingers just brushed the warrior's arm. "I don't know what to say …"

It was the first time he had called the other man by his name; the first time he had ever touched him. _Score two for the human race_ , Apollo thought. Aloud he only said, "Don’t say anything. There's no need." He looked at Bard closely, trying to gauge the man's reactions. The only one immediately evident was shock. "You okay?"

Bard tried to laugh. "Ask me again when I know. I'm okay. Just … well, confused, I guess. It's … you get used to things, to them always being one way, and when they change … even when it's for the good, even then, for a while you can't believe it, you can't quite be sure that it's for real … I _knew_ Negus was dead, they all were, I knew there was no way they could have gotten away … and now – now I don't know what I know any more. Everything's turned upside down, inside out … I don't know whether I'm dreaming, or whether I just woke up. Maybe both." He shook his head distractedly, pushing the hair back from his forehead. "I was the one who was good with words. You'd never know it now. I don't know what I'm saying …" With a sudden change of subject he asked, "Was that your kid just then?"

"M'm." Apollo nodded.

"I didn't know you had family of your own." Bard laughed again, shakily. "Apollo, all these sectars I've known you, I don't know anything about you, man."

"There's just the two of us," Apollo said. "My wife died." It was true, they had never talked of their families, their backgrounds, their upbringings; all that lay in the past, and the past was dangerous ground. "It cuts both ways, Bard."

"I know. I guess neither of us likes to remember too much."

There was a silence. For a moment Apollo thought that that was all the other man would say. _Don't expect too much too soon_ , he told himself silently, but nevertheless felt a sense of abandonment, disappointment that he had failed to gain sufficient trust for this. Then Bard said quietly, "I had a son, once … back before …"

Apollo only looked at him. There was, after all, nothing to say; no balm could heal that hurt, no words could bridge the sudden distance between them. For all his grievous losses, he had been spared that ultimate, most devastating one; he still had his son. Finally, futilely, "I'm sorry," he offered. "It must be … difficult …"

Anything else Apollo might have found to say was interrupted by the arrival of the senior technician on duty, bearing down on him in a manner painfully reminiscent of a Cylon raider closing in for the kill.

"Captain - !"

Apollo shut his eyes. "I don't even have to guess what this is about," he murmured, and opened them again to face the inevitable. "Chief Ishmael?" he asked innocently. Even to himself he sounded wholly unconvincing. "Is there a problem?"

"There's a problem, Captain," the technician said ominously. " _Your_ problem. That child of yours - "

Apollo sighed, deeply, familiarly, and with feeling, and turned to Bard. "I'd better go sort this out," he said apologetically. "I'll see you." He moved away, following the technician. "Well?" he asked, resigned to hearing the worst, "What's Boxey done now?"

If he had looked back, he would have seen Bard staring after him, and the look in his friend's eyes would have caused his heart to sink. But Apollo had long ago learned never to look back, and he did not do so now.

*

Boxey and his companion, the Captain was sternly informed, had somehow persuaded an over-gullible junior technician into letting them take one of the Viper simulators through a low-status training run.

"That's not so bad," Apollo suggested hopefully. "At least they can't hurt themselves, and there's not much in a simulator to break – "

Chief Ishmael was not appeased. "They left it," he said implacably, "with its controls set on turbo. The cadet who used it next had quite a surprise."

Apollo just managed not to laugh, which would have been irredeemably tactless. Instead, carefully, he said, "Yes …" He controlled the slight tremor in his voice, and said again, "Yes. Yes. I expect they did."

The technician looked at him suspiciously. "This is a serious matter, Captain. Of course you understand that."

"Yes," Apollo agreed hastily. "Of course it is – I do." He made a show of glancing at his chrono. "You'll have to excuse me, Chief – I have some reports to write up, and it's getting late. I'll speak to Boxey tonight, okay?"

"Be sure that you do!" the technician called after him.

Apollo made his escape with a sense of relief, grateful for the fact that he had decided not to bother with the period of sick furlon he was theoretically due. Right at that centon he would have been glad to take the longest, deepest patrol going, if he and his Viper had only been on active status. As it was, his office with its ever-hungry computer link and stacks of outstanding datawork had never before looked so welcoming.

*

By the time Apollo had worked through as many files as was humanly possible in the space of one duty shift, and had stopped off at the commissary for what he realised, faintly surprised, was the only meal he had had that day, it was well into Boxey's sleep period. Which, he calculated, checking his chrono, meant that his son might have just about got as far as stacking his toys away.

He keyed open the outer door to his quarters to find the room in a state of chaos that reminded him of the aftermath of one of Blue Squadron's better parties. _He always says he wants to be a warrior when he grows up_ , he thought. _Maybe he's getting into practice …_

"What've you done with him?" he asked Galina, his perpetually harassed childminder, who was standing amidst the wreckage looking around herself hopelessly. Boxey, predictably, was nowhere to be seen. "If you've strangled him, I'll give you an alibi."

Galina laughed. "Don't tempt me. He's been painting." She held up a sheet of many-times-recycled paper for Apollo to admire his son's handiwork. " _Some_ of it went on the page. The rest is currently under the turbospray, hopefully being washed off your son."

The Captain took the painting from her, a slight frown creasing his forehead as he registered the subject. "I wish he'd draw something else …"

The drawing was mature for a child of Boxey's age, depicting a perfectly recognisable Caprican landscape: a house set in a field, trees, flowers, a sleeping daggit, the sun bright in the sky – and red and orange slashes across it all, a child's memory of the laser fire that had come from nowhere between one micron and the next and had destroyed tranquillity and harmony forever.

"Should he keep on going back to it this way, keep dwelling on it?" Apollo looked down at the woman, seeking some kind of reassurance. "Shouldn't it have faded by now?"

She straightened, her hands full of half-read booktapes, and met his eyes steadily. "Has it for you?" she asked simply. She moved away from him and started stacking the tapes on a shelf. "Boxey wasn't much more than a baby when it happened; there was no way he could understand what was going on. You told me how badly disturbed he was after. I'd say that this was his way of dealing with the memories. He doesn't have the nightmares any more, does he?"

"No," Apollo admitted. _I do_ , he thought; but that he did not admit.

"Let well enough be, then. It's probably going more good than harm."

"'Probably'?"

She came back to him, said gently, "Hey – " and touched his hand. "I'm only an unemployed actor, remember? Not a child psychiatrist. Just because I like kids doesn't make me any kind of expert – I can only tell you what I think, for whatever that's worth. Okay?"

Apollo let his fingers curl around hers for a micron. "Okay. I'm sorry."

She didn't take her hand away. "I know how it is. Don't worry."

"I guess that's what parents are for – to worry."

 _He's all I have, you see._

The sudden twist of emotion blinded him for an instant. Hiding it, he turned away toward the turbocubicle. "He's taking his time." He turned the handle and opened the door.

Boxey looked up at him and smiled brightly. "Hi, Dad. It's Muffit's turn now."

Muffit gave a heartfelt mechanical whine. Its circuits were proof against the turbowash particle, but no daggit, whether animal or drone, had ever taken kindly to being bathed, and Muffit was not about to be the first exception.

"Never mind about Muffit," Apollo told his son, and crouched down next to him. "Did you have _your_ turn?" He took Boxey's hands in his and scrutinised them for lingering traces of paint.

"Of course I did!" Boxey said, his tone as injured as if he had never tried to avoid a turbowash in his life. "Galina _told_ me, and I _always_ do what Galina says. I _like_ Galina," he went on, submitting to having his sleepsuit fastened for him. "Galina's my best friend."

"Whatever brought this on?" Galina wondered, looking around the edge of the door.

"Who knows?" Apollo sat back on his heels and regarded his son carefully. "Could it be something to do with someone not a million metrons away sneaking a ride on a Viper mock-up and knowing they're in trouble?"

"You okay, Muffit?" Boxey asked irrelevantly, ignoring his father.

"Surely not," Galina murmured. She waved Boxey a heartless farewell. "See you tomorrow, kid. For tonight – you're on your own."

"Some friend _you_ are," Apollo said accusingly, and went with her to the door. "If I ever need a Protector, I'll know not to come to you."

"For you," she said serenely, "I might consider perjury." At the startled look in his eyes, she smiled. "You pay my salary, after all."

His face relaxed. "So I do," he agreed. "Goodnight, Galina. Thanks for everything."

"You're welcome," she said. She opened the door, made to step out, then started back. "Oh! Oh, I'm sorry!"

The person standing outside apologised in the same instant. "I'm sorry – I didn't mean to startle you – "

Galina recovered herself, and stepped back out into the corridor. "That's okay, it keeps the reflexes in practice – always good training. 'Bye," she said, and was gone. Apollo was left staring at his unexpected visitor in sheer, blank astonishment.

"Bard?"

The other man managed a quick, tight smile, but his discomfort was clearly visible. "Yeah. Can I come in?"

Apollo stood back to let him pass, followed him inside. "I never thought to see you here – thought we'd never get you out of Maintenance. Something wrong?"

"Matter of definition. Not wrong, exactly. Weird, maybe."

"You want a drink?"

"Need, mostly."

"That's good enough for me." He fetched the carafe and a pair of glasses from the locker in his sleeping chamber and poured for them both. "Sit down, will you? I won't be a micron." He went back into the turbocubicle. "Boxey, are you ready for bed, or what?"

"I haven't had my story yet," Boxey objected. "And you were going to yell at me."

"I was _not_ going to yell at you!" his father said, much wounded. "We were going to have a reasonable discussion. Are going to. Tomorrow."

"I won't be able to sleep if I'm worrying about it," Boxey warned him. "I might even have another nightmare."

His father pounced mercilessly upon this flawed logic. "You won't have a nightmare if you can't get to sleep," he pointed out. "Come on, monster." He bent down to his son and lifted him in his arms. Boxey wrapped his arms and legs around him tightly.

"You're not mad at me?"

Apollo hesitated, recalling the educational trips of his own childhood, not so very long before: how the instructors had always hurried past whatever he most wanted to see and lingered forever over what interested him least; their endless, needless nagging: _keep in line, pay attention, don't touch anything …_ Remembering, he could hardly help but sympathise. But back then he had been a child. Now he was an adult, a parent, and words like 'responsibility' and 'duty' and 'good example' kept nudging at the borders of his conscience.

"Not much," he finally said. "Not so long as you take care and don't hurt yourself, or anyone else – or break anything. That's the most important thing. But you should mind Siress Alyssa when you're with her. If you'd got into any trouble, how do you think she'd have felt, huh? And Chief Tech Ishmael _was_ mad, and I don't suppose the cadet who took the next simulation was very happy, either – did you know you'd left it on turbo?" Boxey, who had been looking suitably contrite, started to giggle irrepressibly. Apollo sighed. "Okay, yes, very funny. And I don't want you to go leading Anansï into mischief, either – she's younger than you are, you should take care of her."

Boxey yawned. "You don't know Anansï very much, do you, Dad?" he looked over his father's shoulder. "C'mon, Muffit.

The drone pulled itself out of the turbowash, yapped irritably a couple of times, and waddled after its owners, through the outer room into the sleeping quarters. Bard, settled in the depths of one of the seating units, looked up as the small procession went by, watching expressionlessly.

In spite of his best efforts, Boxey was asleep almost before his father had pulled the quilt over him. Apollo waited for a few microns, watching to see the child settled before rejoining his visitor.

"I'm sorry about that. He should have been in sleep period a centar ago, but he has a mind of his own." He settled himself on a seating unit across from the other man, reached out to take up his glass. "Bard, what brings you here?"

For a moment the singer made no answer. Finally, obliquely, he asked, "Isn't it hard, bringing up a kid on a ship like this – in a time like this?"

Apollo leaned back and considered. "I suppose it is," he said, surprisedly. "But I'm so used to it now, I don't even think about it. Boxey's a part of my life – a part of myself." His fingers closed around the bowl of the glass as he thought, remembered. "Just after my wife died … then it was hard. We were both adjusting, Boxey and I, getting to know each other – " He looked up. "I don't think I explained – sometimes I almost forget – he's adopted; I married his mother. I told you, my wife died. There were times back then when I didn't think I could cope. I'd lost – " He drew breath, let it go. "A lot. Now I was losing my freedom as well, suddenly becoming responsible for another person, another life …" He hesitated, frowned, tried to explain. "In a way I was accustomed to that, being who I am and doing what I do, but this was different. I'm responsible for my warriors, they need me to lead them – at least, I like to think so – but they can get by without me. Boxey … Boxey's a child, and he depended on me for _everything_. He reminded me of her, too, and sometimes that was more than I could bear. And I didn't know what kind of a parent I'd make, whether I'd even be there for him for long. Being a warrior means … well, you know what it means. When you go out, there's never any guarantee you'll make it back. I even thought of letting him go, giving him up for some other couple to raise – civilians, I mean, someone who could give him security and order and safety …"

"You changed your mind?"

"I never really made it up. It seemed the easy option, but it wasn't what I wanted, it wasn’t what Boxey wanted, it wasn't what Serina would have wanted, what she'd asked of me. And whatever I'd lost, it was nothing to what Boxey had. He needed me, needed someone familiar, someone he knew cared for him, wanted him … loved him. He needed that, not to be passed on to some stranger like a piece of secondhand merchandise. And, when it comes down to it, where is there in the fleet that's safe? We've lost civilians before. Anyone can die in a raid - and at least I have the comfort of knowing that the _Galactica_ 's the best defended ship we have. Boxey's as safe here as anywhere. Galina – that's the woman you met just now – Galina takes care of him for me when I'm working, when he's not in instruction. That's another thing."

"What is?"

"That I can afford a childminder, and to have a monitor system set up so that I can leave him at night and not worry about him waking with no-one there – his drone's programmed as a watchdaggit, but I don't like to rely on it too much." His eyes flickered to the emptiness beyond the viewport and his mouth twisted wryly. "There's not much else to spend my pay vouchers on, after all."

"Rank has its privileges," Bard observed, "like they say."

Apollo admitted it. "Boxey _is_ a privileged child. It's difficult for me to accept. I despise the privilege system, I hate the fact that it even exists, but at the same time I want the best for my son. So what can I do?"

Bard shrugged. "Compromise."

"Perpetually." The glasses were empty; Apollo refilled them, waiting.

"I guess I owe you an explanation," the singer said slowly. "See, something happened … something strange." His fleeting smile came and went. "This is one of those days; just one thing after another. First Negus, then …" He let the sentence hang, reached for his glass.

Apollo waited again. Finally Bard said, "The child I saw you with today, the one I asked if it was your kid – I meant the little girl. I didn't notice you with the boy."

"Anansï?" Apollo said. "Lords, no!" He was smiling; Bard looked a question. "Yes, I know she looks like an angel in miniature, but popular opinion has it that she's actually a Cylon in disguise. Boxey's a handful, but compared to his cousin …" 'Cousin' was a convenient term; Anansï's parents had both been warriors in Apollo's wing, both killed in one protracted, horror-filled battle, and Athena had adopted the child in order to keep her in her familiar surroundings aboard the _Galactica_. "No, Boxey's my son – "

"Adopted," Bard reminded him gently. "I told you it was strange, Apollo, and I don't suppose he'll remember, but I've met your son before." He lifted his head to look into Apollo's still face. "You and I, we have a lot in common: the way we look at things, the way we feel. And something else, too …"

Apollo knew what had to be coming. _Soulmates?_ he thought ironically and, aloud, asked needlessly, "You – knew Serina?"

"Yahrens ago." Bard qualified the fact quickly. "Long before any of this – even before she was famous. Even before _I_ was famous." He looked at Apollo again, his expression uncertain. "Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

Apollo shifted his shoulders aimlessly, unsure himself of the answer. "No. Yes … I don't know. Of course, she knew a lot of people before she met me, had other friends, other lovers … So did I – we were both adults, how else would it be? It's just … I suppose I never expected to meet one." He drained his glass again, again refilled both it and Bard's. "No, of course I'm glad you told me. Once you realised – "

"Once I'd realised, anything else would've been dishonest," Bard finished. "And I owe you better than that." He hesitated. "We stayed friends. I still used to drop by to see her, even after it was over between us – used to make sure she got tickets for the Caprica City concerts, and backstage passes – "

"Backstage passes?" Apollo blinked. "I do believe I'm jealous." His mouth twitched. "I loved my wife – " Had he stressed that too strongly? _My wife?_ "But I just can't picture her as a believer."

"No?" Bard said. "Ah, but you're wrong. She was a true believer. She believed in me just when I needed it the most, and I'll always owe her for that. I wrote _Moonsilver_ for her, and _Shelter From the Storm_ , and _Winds of Change_ after she left me; she was with me when I wrote _Heartland_ …"

"You're talking my history," Apollo said, for the sake of saying something. " _Winds of Change_ … I remember a fight I had with my girl … and _Heartland_ , that was the one that first made the rest of the worlds sit up and listen to what we believers had been telling them for yahrens."

"You make me feel old," Bard said. "That was still yahrens ago."

 _Yahrens ago: yes. How many? Ten, fifteen – more?_ Apollo felt his heart turn over painfully in his chest; he closed his eyes. _Thank god for that_! Then his eyes opened again and he wondered, with a kind of horror, _am I jealous? Just what am I afraid of?_

But he knew the answer to that. He was afraid of a ghost: the ghost of a man he had never met, a man whose name he didn't even know. He had said to her, _When you're ready, you'll tell me_. But she had never been ready, had never told him; and now it was too late, he would never know, and the fear was of the unknown – of the unknown, forgotten, lost, reappearing and demanding as its right what it had long ago abandoned, what he had long since come to think of as his own.

 _How many girls were there, besides Marta? Serina was as old as I; there must have been at least as many men._

Did that increase the chances of that one particular one reappearing, or did it lessen them? One of Serina's past lovers had survived the destruction; what were the odds against another having also done so?

 _God, listen to me! I'm wishing some man, some human, dead, just because …_

Bard was speaking again. "I don't know if he'll remember me." No demands, no assertion of a father's rights. "My career really took off about the time he must have been born – how old is he? Eight yahrens? – and I only saw Serina a few more times after that. But I'd like to see him – if you don't mind." The musician's hands, the strong, square fingers, were stretched out before him, his eyes fixed on them. "He's all that's left of her now. I'd like to look into his eyes, see his mother through him." He looked up. "I loved her, Apollo. I couldn't hold her, but I loved her. And sometimes memories aren't enough. You know that."

Apollo bowed his head, unable to withstand the wordless plea in the man's eyes that were dull and uncaring no longer; unable to deny a truth that he had shared.

>   
> _Now, I'm not a hero, I know it's true  
>  But everything I am, it all depends on you …_   
> 

He thought, _Serina_. He had never wondered who the song might have been written for; he only knew that he had lived it.

>   
> _Oh, lover,  
>  Don't walk away, don't leave me standing here alone  
> Don't dazzle your eyes with the glittering lies  
> The broken promises of the unknown …_   
> 

But she had: had left him, as she had left Bard also, though not in the same way; had left him to try to live his life alone, almost to fail. Had it been easier for Bard? He, at least, had had the release of his music, perhaps even the belief, or at least the hope, that his loss might not be forever. For himself there had been no hope and no release, only the rigid bounds of duty – at least, in the beginning. Love, the shared and reciprocated love of his son, had come later, a slow but unstoppable, inevitable growth.

"I know," he said at last, quietly. "I understand. I'll bring him with me, if I can, the next time I'm down in the bay." He grinned suddenly, the shadow passed. "I warn you, once you get him down there, you may not be able to get rid of his again."

The other man smiled too. "I won't mind," he said. "It'll liven the place up."

"That," Apollo said, with feeling, "it certainly will." He refilled the glasses again, tipping the carafe upside-down to drain the last of the vignon. "You'll see. Here."

Bard took the glass from him. "I told you it was a strange day. Negus; Boxey … two parts of my life, two things that I'd thought were lost forever."

"All the rules say there ought to be a third."

"There is."

Apollo looked at him, waiting. The singer stood abruptly, pushing himself restlessly up out of his seat, and walked to the viewport. One of Boxey's paintings was stuck to the bulkhead beside it. He stood back, regarding it thoughtfully.

"Laser fire," he said quietly. "After all this time … it went that deep." He fell silent, gazing outward to the stars. After a few centons Apollo moved to join him.

"Three things," he said. "The third?"

Bard turned to him, his eyes dark and starfilled. "The third," he said. "Myself."

*

The liot was long out of tune, half its strings snapped, its casing scarred. Bard held it lovingly, gently loosening its pins, winding off broken strings and winding on new ones, easing one and tightening another, the warped notes wailing in torment. Apollo winced.

"It's been a long time," the musician murmured apologetically; but his fingers were sure and competent on the strings, and he held the ancient instrument as though it had been carved for his hands alone.

"Maybe we should leave it until morning," Apollo said, feeling the sudden drag of tiredness at his bones as the vignon glow gradually faded, seeing the hollows and shadows under his friend's darkened eyes. It had been a long day: an early patrol, his Viper crashing, finding Negus, Boxey's little escapade … he was more than ready to fall into his bunk. But Bard's sudden energy had been contagious, and so here they both were, in the middle of the night period, down in the Viper maintenance bay, fixing a broken liot. It made, he considered, about as much sense as most things that happened in his life.

"It's always morning down here." Bard's gaze flickered upward for a micron, then returned to his work. "Or always night, depending on how you look at it. At the moment I regard it as morning: a new dawn, the first since the Destruction … am I slurring?"

"Yes."

"It figures. You too."

"Figures." Resigned to a long wait, Apollo shifted a stack of requisition forms off a workbench and settled himself comfortably.

"Myself," Bard said, without looking up. "A piecework puzzle, composed mostly of spaces. A barely discernible pattern. Junk; discardable." Then he did glance up, quickly, and then away again. "You didn't. Funny; I'd've never marked you as the kind that hung on to junk."

Apollo spread his hands wide. "I don't discard what I care for."

"Even when it's broken, beyond repair?"

"You weren't beyond repair."

Bard set the liot carefully aside and leaned forward, his head on one side, studying Apollo's face as if for a clue to some mystery. "How could you _know_ that? I sure didn't. How could you know that you would find enough missing pieces to make the pattern make sense?"

"Make sense," Apollo said, and stifled a yawn. "Not much."

"It's my poetic impulses. They've been suppressed for too long …" He flashed Apollo a bright, wicked grin. "It could be dangerous."

"You terrify me."

"I try." He picked up the liot. "Listen." His fingertips swept casually across the strings. The chord echoed in the silence of the room; reverberated, faded, died. Apollo remembered to breathe.

"How do you _do_ that?"

Bard looked at him sombrely. "It's what I do. That's all I know. I don't know how. I hear it, I feel it, but I don't know how I make it happen. It just does. It's like …" His mouth twisted wryly in self-mockery. "It's like the world was a song waiting to be written. It's like I'm the instrument and something, some force I can't understand, don't even want to, is playing me …" He shook his head. "Too much vignon."

"Not if that's the result. You can't apply 'too much' to your music; it's a contradiction in terms." Apollo wrapped his arms around himself, warming away the reminder of emptiness that that one chord had awakened within him. "It hurts. But, oh, god …"

Bard said softly, "I know." He touched the strings again, pulling forth a thread of melody. Apollo listened, knowing the song, hearing it afresh in his mind:

>   
> _We were brothers and comrades and lovers and friends  
>  In a world growing weary and cold  
> In a world like a trap that ground visions of freedom to dust.  
> We were warrior heroes who fought to defend  
> Hopes and dreams that could never grow old  
> And we stood back to back, and we vowed to ourselves faith and trust.  
> It was you, it was me, man, right up to the end  
> And we never accepted defeat  
> Take a stand  
> Never beat the retreat …_   
> 

The music stopped suddenly. Bard raised his head, listening. His forehead creased. "Something …"

Apollo straightened, his tiredness rushing away as he too sensed the tension in the air a micron after the other man.

"Something wrong," Bard said, and then they both heard it: running feet, voices shouting orders, other voices answering. Apollo was on his feet in a moment and heading for the door.

"Get Life Centre on alert!" he snapped back over his shoulder, and then he was running for the landing bay, skidding to a halt by the barrier where the emergency team was already waiting. The fireleader's head jerked up, acknowledging him.

"Viper coming in, Captain. Pilot reports problem."

"Who - ?" His mind raced back through a stack of recorded duty rosters. "Lieutenant Boomer's patrol isn't due back for another – "

"Ensign Teleri," one of the firefighters told him. "Not a patrol."

"What? Maintenance scan?"

"The _Celestra_. Authorised late this evening." The man took his eyes from the incoming fighter long enough to look at Blue Squadron's commander. "After you'd logged out, sir."

"Didn't take long." Bard was at Apollo's side now.

"Maybe they couldn't find any problems …?" the firefighter offered.

Apollo's hands grew white on the railing. "If that's so," he said tightly, "they were wrong. Look at her. _Look at her!_ "

Approaching, the ship bucked and weaved as though caught in an unexpected pocket of turbulence. Its engines screamed painfully as it broke through the final force barrier. It touched wheels to the ground once, bumped, lifted again, touched, skidded, overshot …

" _Hold it! Hang onto it, keep it together!_ " Apollo's voice was raw, agonised. Bard looked at him saw the horror in his eyes, heard him half-scream again, " _Teleri!_ " Bard grabbed his arm, as if to hold him back, felt his muscles rigid beneath his hand. He was whispering now, still watching the ship. "Reverse thrusters … for the gods' sake, decelerate …"

The ship began to lose speed. Bard's fingers tightened on Apollo's arm. Apollo's hands were clenched against his mouth, stifling his desperate, hopeless prayers. Bard added one of his own.

 _She's so close … let her make it …_

The ship skidded, slewed, caromed off one wall, spun, stilled. There was silence, utter and absolute, for a micron. Then the canopy lifted and the pilot scrambled free, throwing herself toward the safety zone. Boraton control cut in and began to rain flame retardant mist down on the damaged craft. The watchers dared to move.

"Okay," the fireleader said, and looked around, gathering his men to him. "Let's go in." He adjusted his breather gear and led the men forward. Apollo glanced up, found Bard watching him, managed a smile.

"Close," he said briefly, and moved away to where Teleri was being checked out by a grim-faced medtech. "Ensign?"

The young woman raised her head. The pupils of her eyes were huge with remembered terror. She swallowed, visibly gathering control. "Sir."

"What happened?"

"Can't this wait?" the medic said irritably.

"I'm not sure, sir," Teleri said. "My braking controls failed to respond. I don't know why – there was no warning, no sign of any problem – "

"Was that what took you to the _Celestra?_ "

"No, sir. My commline had been malfunctioning. The _Celestra_ fixed that – and, sir, they ran a full scan while I was over there. Nothing showed up, and this still happened …" She bit her lip, hearing her own voice rising. "I'm sorry, Captain. It's just that – sir, if you’re hit in a battle, that's part of the job, you expect that, that's the way warriors go. You don't expect your own ship to try and kill you!"

"Calm down, Ensign," Apollo said automatically, and found her a reassuring smile from somewhere. "And don't apologise. You're right." He held his hands, a patchwork of darker and paler flesh tones from the regen treatment, up to show her. "I feel the same way."

She looked at his hands, then into his eyes, and shuddered. She said, very softly, "When you see the bulkhead, coming toward you, and everything you do still doesn't stop it …"

A scarred hand touched her shoulder lightly. "I know," the captain said. His eyes found the medic, uninterestedly registering his scowl, then returned to his warrior. "You're not hurt?"

"Just scared," she admitted.

"You'd better take some sick furlon anyway. I'll clear it." He smiled again. He was no medtech, but he knew from his own experience that only knowing that one is not alone, that another understands, can be the first step toward a kind of healing. "For the aftershock. You may find you need it."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. By your leave?"

He nodded dismissal. She turned toward the turbolift, the medtech at her side, then looked back over her shoulder. "Sir?"

"Yes, Ensign?"

"Sir … thank you."

"For what?" he asked, puzzled by an odd, unidentifiable note in her voice.

"For not pretending that there's nothing wrong. For believing that we have the right to know what's going on. For the truth," she said, and the turbolift doors closed behind her, shutting off the captain's startled response half-spoken.

From where he still waited, Bard watched him stand for a moment, gathering his thoughts together, then cross the safety barrier to speak to the fire team. The fireleader turned to him, said something; Apollo responded, agreeing, looking across at the foam-covered fuselage. Then Bard felt it: a high-pitched whine, just above the highest range of human hearing. It sang through his bones like a bitter wind, and its message was a portent of disaster. Instinctively his gaze flew to the downed fighter.

"Apollo!" he yelled. His friend turned, raised a hand in acknowledgement.

"Just a centon," he called back, and resumed his discussion with the fireleader.

 _They can't hear it_ , Bard realised, appalled. _They don't realise –_ He jumped the barrier and raced across the deck. "Apollo, the ship's going to blow!"

The fireleader turned an impatient frown on him. "No chance – we've neutralised all the combustible – "

Bard heard and felt the explosion a micron before it happened, grabbed at Apollo's jacket and pulled his friend down with him as he threw himself flat. The impact winded him, turned the warrior's protest into an inarticulate gasp.

In the next instant, the landing bay went nova.

*

Bard opened his eyes carefully, taking stock of himself piece by aching piece. The aching, he realised surprisedly, seemed to be the worst of it; he could see, he could hear, he could feel.

Part of what he could feel was a dead weight across his legs. He heaved himself free, dragging himself to his hands and knees, and looked.

A dead weight was exactly what it was. The fireleader, what was left of him. He must have taken the brunt of the impact, Bard realised, and his body had been the shield that had left himself with only superficial injuries.

 _Poor bastard. He should've listened to me … I shouldn't think that way …_

"Apollo?" He coughed; the air was acrid with smoke and tylium fumes. Through the haze he glimpsed dark brown, pale beige, a splash of bright scarlet, the warm tones of flesh faded to a sickly grey. He dragged himself across. "Apollo?" He touched a flaccid hand, the still line of a cheekbone. "Apollo!"

One eye opened, fog-bleared green, then closed again despairingly.

"Oh, gods," the warrior moaned, and buried his face in his arms. "Life Centre twice in less than two days. Cassiopeia is going to _kill_ me!"

*

He woke from a dream of floating to find himself floating in fact. He registered the sensation with distant disinterest, no particular concern of his, then forgot about it.

A white blur floated across his vision, resolved itself after a moment into a recognisable face. Cassiopeia. A faint twinge of alarm sounded somewhere at the back of his mind.

"Awake?" the medtech asked, with professional brightness.

He mumbled, "No," and hoped she'd go away. She did, but came back again a micron later. Memory and solidity began slowly to return.

"Well," Cassiopeia said. "Apollo. This _is_ a surprise, seeing you in here. Yet again."

That was unfair. Apollo muttered a protest. Cassiopeia leaned closer.

"What did you say?"

He tried again. "It wasn't my fault … honest to god, Cassi, I was just _standing_ there … I didn't _do_ anything …"

"You," she said acidly, "don't have to do anything. If there was ever an accident just waiting to happen, Apollo, it's you." She glanced away, nodded slightly at someone out of Apollo's limited field of vision. "You have a visitor. Try not to do anything to yourself while I'm not watching you, okay?"

"You're being really mean today," Apollo complained after her, then smiled up as her face was replaced by Bard's. "Hi."

Bard was looking thoughtfully after Cassiopeia as she walked away. "I think she likes you," he commented.

"Oh, sure," Apollo said. "If she liked me much more, she'd have me put humanely to sleep." He shifted a cramped muscle – the medical experts who claimed it was impossible to get cramp (let alone bedsores) inside a lifepod had clearly never been in one – realising that the floating sensation was due to the pod's being set to minimum grav. Fragments, he guessed, lacerations; nothing too lasting or serious. If it had've been, it would've been Salik's face that he woke to, his father waiting anxiously by. He should know. He'd been there often enough. Maybe Cassi had a point after all. "You're okay? Everyone else?"

"I'm fine," Bard said. His voice was several tones deeper than usual, rough and husky. Apollo looked a question at him. "Smoke inhalation. Nothing much. You should hear me singing. Even I could go for me. I kind of hope it lasts." His smile faded. "We don't have much of a fire team left. Three fatalities. I'm sorry – I tried to warn – "

Apollo moved a hand to silence him. "You warned, we didn't listen. We have no-one to blame but ourselves." Then something registered. "You said – singing?"

"Joyous reunion and first rehearsal yesterday. I kind of wanted to wait 'til you could be there, but I'm glad I didn't. We were _awful!_ " He laughed. "Someone should've taped us – they could've made a fortune in blackmail. Things picked up after the first centar or so. By the end of the evening we were just about ready to go out and win a juvenile talent contest."

"We were not," another voice put in, " _that_ bad. My friend exaggerates. Of course."

Turning his head to the side, Apollo glimpsed something dark and solid. Negus, he realised. The big man moved closer, filling Apollo's perspective.

"We just have to work out the mix," he went on, "and the balance, and the material, and a few other little minor details. We should be ready to take the fleet by storm in – "

" – in a yahren or two," Bard put in. "Or three, or four. If we're all still here." He glanced at his chrono. "Duty calls. We still haven't fixed your Viper, Apollo – sorry."

"That's okay," Apollo said resignedly. "I'm not going anywhere for a while." He settled back, closing his eyes, listening as the footsteps moved away. Then he remembered something.

"Bard?" His movements restricted by the life systems, Apollo reached out with his voice. The singer stopped, looked back.

"Yeah?"

"I didn't say … thank you."

Bard moved back to the life pod, gazing unsmiling at the warrior. "No need, Apollo. What else could I have done? I owed you a life." He walked quickly away before Apollo could reply, and no-one heard him add, softly, "At least one."

*

A secton of inactivity in the Life Centre, even relieved by visits from his entire family and half the squadron, the triumphant demonstration of Starbuck's latest infallible system for bleeding the _Rising Star_ chancery white, and the particular attentions of a couple of determinedly insistent medtechs, had the inevitable effect of reducing Apollo's patience to zero and everyone else's nerves to shreds. Everyone, himself included, was deeply relieved to see him go.

"And they still won't put me back on active status," he grumbled to Galina, back in the sanctuary of his own quarters.

" _I_ haven't been on active status since we left Caprica," she reminded him icily, rendering him temporarily speechless and silently cursing himself.

"I'm sorry," he said, when he could say anything at all. "I didn't mean – "

She looked stonily at him for a moment, then her expression relaxed. "I know. On the whole, I guess you have the better right to complain. I wasn't much of an actor, anyway."

"Don't say that." There were two theatrical groups in the fleet, one touring from ship to ship, the other working in conjunction with the IFB. Spaces in the companies were limited, dependent on the retirement or death of an existing member. Galina was one of the many unlucky ones. "You were good in that series you did for AirCaprica …"

"Five yahrens ago," she finished. "Well, I suppose I should be thankful that I have that, at least. Memories …"

"We all have those." Good, bad … or was it bad and worse? He shook the thought away, knowing it was not his own. So much sorrow in the worlds, in the fleet; they breathed it in the air, like oxygen. "Galina – I know it doesn't mean much, but …" He hesitated, swallowed. "I couldn't manage without you. Boxey and I – "

"You could always," she said unemotionally, "get another childminder. It requires no particular special skill."

"That's not true either," he said quietly. He reached out to her, holding her wrists in his hands, and she looked up at him. After a moment she made to lift her arms; he let her go. "Galina, what is it? Is something wrong?" The irony, the sheer stupidity of the question made him wince. "I mean – other than the usual, other than the situation?"

"I'll tell you," she said, "when I know." Then she asked, unexpectedly and apparently irrelevantly, "The man who came here the other night – Bard – who is he? He seemed to know Boxey. Is he _the_ Bard?"

"He knew him on Caprica," Apollo said. "He knew my wife. And yes, he is."

Her lips made a little soundless 'oh!' of understanding. "That would explain it …"

"Explain what?" Apollo heard the anxious note in his own voice, and wondered at it.

"Why he should take such an interest," she said. "He was the one who came and told us you were in Life Centre. Again," she added, with what Apollo felt to be unnecessary emphasis. "He stayed for a while, talking to Boxey, quieting him down … Boxey was pretty upset when he heard. You'd think he'd be used to it by now."

"Have you been talking to Cassi?" Apollo demanded suddenly. She looked at him in surprise.

"No. Why?"

He exhaled heavily. "Never mind. Skip it. They got on well, huh?"

"Pretty well. He's been here almost every evening this past secton, helping me out, keeping Boxey company. Not that Boxey was short on company. Whenever you're away, this place gets like Caprica Central."

"It bothered you?"

"Me?" She sounded surprised and, oddly, flustered. "No – no, why should it? I was glad of the company myself. I just wondered … Bard promised to show Boxey where he works, down in Maintenance. Boxey wanted to go right away, you know what he's like, but I said he'd have to wait and ask you."

Apollo pictured the scene. "I'll bet you were popular."

"Extremely. But what could I do? I don't know the man, and with you out of the picture – "

"Do not," Apollo said dangerously, "say 'again'. No, you did just right. I apologise for my son …" He paused, reflected, then said, "Yes, again. I think it applies in this case." He stood, slowly, waiting for the ground to settle beneath his feet; he was still not entirely comfortable with the vertical. "Bard. I'll go down and talk to him. I want to see him anyway. He's got my Viper."

"Oh, well," Galina said, "in _that_ case !"

*

Bard looked up as Apollo neared him, smiled an absent greeting. "I know what you're going to say, so don't ask. I've got my team working on it." He reached up impatiently, swept his hair out of his eyes as it fell across his face. "I've been looking at something else." He motioned the warrior forward. "Here."

"What is it?" Apollo asked, looking down at the shard of jagged metal. "Teleri's Viper," he realised a micron later. "What are you ?"

"Flaws in the base fabric," Bard said.

"From the explosion? Is there anything left besides flaws?"

"Not from the explosion. From before. Fatigue cracks. Microscopic. They'd have passed a general inspection." He rephrased himself. "They _did_ pass a general inspection!"

"But that was one of the new Vipers," Apollo protested. "From the Foundry Ship. Fatigue cracks on _my_ Viper I could understand, or Starbuck's, or Boomer's – any of the original ones – but on the new ships?"

Bard lifted the fragment in his hands, turned it around and over aimlessly, set it down again. "It struck me as odd," he said, "that we should have had this long run of instrument failure, equipment failure, but with no pattern to it. It's not just one part that's finally succumbed to wear and tear, it's something different every time. He looked up at Apollo again and said slowly, "What if the fault was not in the Vipers?"

Apollo say down heavily. He put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. "I just got out of Life Centre," he said plaintively. "I'm not ready for this. The fault _is_ in the Vipers. They keep crashing. You want to tell me that's not a fault?"

"Warriors," Bard said witheringly. "Tunnel vision. One-track minds."

"Two-track minds!" Apollo protested. "Drink and women!"

The other man ignored him. "What," he continued determinedly, "what if the fault were not in the Vipers – but in the Foundry Ship equipment? What if the materials they're supplying for repair and replacement are faulty?"

Apollo sat very still, the implications slowly stretching to fill his mind. "Deliberately?" he finally, faintly asked. "Sabotage?"

Bard shook his head. "I don't think so. Simply … if a Viper part can wear out, then so can the foundry plant, or at least a part of it. Not even a major part, necessarily. Suppose an alloy, say – suppose a fault in the foundry resulted in its being compounded fractionally out of true, the proportions not quite exact. That tiny error might not show on any routine scan – but it might make all the difference at full stress."

"Might," Apollo said, hearing his own voice shake. "Would. I know that much." He stood, scraping the bench back across the floor. "Bard, you want to come and tell Colonel Tigh what you've just told me?"

Bard grimaced. "Not much, but I suppose I will. What do you think, I could be right?"

Apollo glanced down at the fading marks on his hands, reached involuntarily to touch the sealed scar across one temple. "The way things are going," he said practically, "I would be prepared to consider any theory. I don't want to lose any more pilots, and I'd like to hang on to the trust of the ones I still do have. What's more, I don't want to lose _me_. This is your theory, Bard – we're going to see the Colonel together." He looked his friend over with a critical eye. "Don't worry about changing your coveralls – at least it looks like you've been working."

Bard stared meaningfully at Apollo's uniform which was, reasonably enough in the circumstances, immaculate. "Yeah?" was all he said.

*

"So," Apollo said brightly, several centars later, "how does it feel to be the hero of the fleet?"

Bard prised his eyelids apart and focused painfully on the other man. "Feel?" he echoed hollowly. "I was past feelin' after the fifth … or was it the sixth?" His fingers moved tentatively upward to touch his head, but fell back midway as he thought better of it. "Besides," he added, a few moments later, "you should know – I thought _you_ were the number one hotshot hero 'round here."

"Not tonight I'm not." The turbolift slid to a smooth halt. Apollo put his hands on his friend's shoulders and steered him out into the corridor. "You're the man of the moment. Except possibly with the engineers on the Foundry Ship …"

"Can't win 'em all." Bard came up short in front of a closed door, regarded it in some puzzlement. Apollo keyed the entry control, thoughtfully steadying the other man as the wall fell away from him.

"Here." He manoeuvred the singer around to the seating unit. "Sit." He closed his eyes in sympathetic pain as Bard hit the seat with a thump; the medication he was still taking had kept him confined to drinking water all night, but he'd been there. "Caffia." He moved to the dispenser, keyed an order for two cups, set them down on the table. "Wait a centon." Noiselessly he slid open the door to Boxey's room and reached inside to switch off the monitor system. Muffit growled at him or, rather, whirred. He made a mental note that the thing was about due for a service and slid the door shut again. Turning, he saw that Bard had managed to gather himself together and stand. He was supporting himself against the far wall, looking down at Boxey's painting.

"Is this the picture you had up before?" he asked.

Apollo moved to join him. "No, this is the latest version – Galina just put it up today. They're all variations on the same theme … I think it's worrying, other people tell me it's only to be expected. One of the joys of fatherhood." He leaned against the wall, folding his arms. "Problems. What do you think?"

"Think?" Bard raised his head, glanced toward him absently, his eyes going past him, unseeing. "Nice daggit … You got a stylus?" he suddenly asked.

Apollo looked at him, shrugged, went to the desk and found a stylus and a writing block, brought them back. "Here," he said. "Any particular ?"

Bard was scribbling rapidly and didn't seem to hear him. Apollo shrugged again, reminded that he was in the presence of what had been described as genius, and turned back to his by now lukewarm caffia. Bard rejoined him a few centons later, laying the block down on the table.

"Anything?"

"Maybe. An idea, anyway. A spark, a seed …" The singer fell silent. Then he shook his head, winced, and said, "Shouldn't I be getting back?" He leaned across to check Apollo's chrono. "Gods, I'm due on early shift …"

Apollo reached out and pulled him back down as he tried to stand. "You're staying here – remember? I've logged you in as being on a special assignment." Which, he thought, was _almost_ true. "You go on duty in the state you're in, you could end up short-circuiting the entire fleet."

"Oh," Bard said blankly. "Did you tell me that before?"

Apollo gave a patient nod. "Twice. I fixed it all up when I came back here to put Boxey to bed." He saw Bard's perplexed expression and almost laughed. "Lords of Kobol. You didn't even notice I'd gone, did you?"

"Not really." The singer reflected for a moment. "I guess that's okay, then," he finally decided. "Thank the lords for friends in high places."

"No kidding," Apollo said. He went into his own sleeping chamber, fetched a spare blanket from his locker, brought it back and tossed it to Bard. "Make yourself at home. I'll see you in the morning."

"If I live the night," Bard murmured, faintly but with feeling. Apollo grinned maliciously, but went back into his room and fetched a phial of painkiller capsules.

"Here. I'd hate to have the hero of the fleet die on my sofa."

"So," Bard agreed fervently, "would I. Goodnight, Apollo. Thanks."

He thought as he closed his eyes, _I seem to be always saying 'thank you'_ , and his mouth curled a little at some unspoken irony.

He was woken far too early in the morning by his friend's son who, with his daggit drone in tow, erupted out of his sleeping chamber at what would, planetside, have been first light, helped himself to breakfast from the dispenser, and then stood at the foot of the seating unit, chewing cereal and fixing Bard with an accusing gaze.

"I know who you are now," Boxey eventually, triumphantly, said. "You used to come and see my mom, when I was just a kid." He sat down hard on the end of the unit, just missing Bard's feet. Muffit jumped up beside him and settled in a solid lump across the boy's lap, making the seating unit tilt precariously. "You used to sleep on her sofa, too."

Bard gave a rueful smile. "I remember," he agreed.

"I wish I'd remembered before," Boxey went on. "Then Galina would've had to let me go down to Maintenance with you." He looked sulky for a micron, but recovered rapidly. "Can I still? My class went down to the bay for a visit, but they never let us look at _anything_ we – "

"Yes," Bard interrupted. "I heard all about that. We'll have to time it for when Chief Tech Ishmael's not around, I guess." He smiled at the boy. "I expect your father will want you back all in one piece, after all."

"I'm not scared of Chief Tech Ishmael!" Boxey said scornfully.

"Maybe not, but _I_ am," Apollo put in, appearing at the doorway. "Boxey, did you turbowash yet? You'll be late for instruction."

"Can't I stay ?" Boxey began, and was ruthlessly cut short.

"Absolutely not. No instruction, no visit down to Maintenance. You got that?"

The mutinous expression returned to Boxey's face, but he obediently slid to the floor and trailed off in the direction of the turbocubicle, Muffit following. Bard looked up at Apollo.

"He remembers me." His voice was laden with some unnameable emotion. "He – " He swallowed. "He's … very like his mother. He's all her child."

"Is he?" Apollo asked quietly. He was still, biting back the question that thrust itself forward, that he had promised himself he would never ask: _do you know who …?_ "I used to see Serina in him," he finally said instead. "Now, mostly, I see only Boxey." He smiled wryly. "I forget, you know, that he's not my own. Sometimes I catch myself thinking I see myself in him, or my kid brother …"

"You have a kid brother?"

"I used to."

Bard winced. "Damn. I should have learned by now, you don't ask questions like that any more. I'm sorry." He looked at the expression, the sudden extinction of expression, on Apollo's averted face, and said again, shaken, "I'm real sorry."

Apollo recovered, shook the moment away. "It's a long story … The way he died, it was partly my fault …" The twisted smile came again, this time with a trace of bitterness. "It took me the best part of a yahren to get it down to only 'partly'. You know how it is."

"I know," Bard said.

"I never thanked you," Apollo said suddenly, "for spending so much time with Boxey while I was in Life Centre. It was good of you. I hope he wasn't too much trouble."

"No," Bard assured him. "No trouble at all."

"Well," Apollo observed, "that makes a change." He turned away, crossed the room to the turbocubicle. "Boxey, if you've drowned in there, don't block the drainage system, okay?" An indignant response could just be heard coming through the closed door.

"Yes," Bard said, again, quietly. "I know how it is. I know." He reached out and took up the writing pad, read through the words he had scribbled the night before and then forgotten until now.

>   
> _I was just a child when the Cylons came  
>  And I remember fire, and I remember pain  
> But I don't remember sunshine, I don't remember rain –  
> Won't you tell me how things used to be?_   
> 

He laid the block back down again, dropped his head into his hands; whispered, "… how it used to be …"

If you could recapture the way things were, live again the moments lost forever, passed too quickly and scarcely noted at the time, regretted ever since …

If you could salvage just one thing, one small thing, out of the millions upon millions of missed opportunities, of what had fled, what had been snatched from you …

If you could rearrange the world to a pattern of your own making, without a thought for any but your own needs …

But past was past, and lost was lost, and the world went on its own relentless, unheeding way, a kaleidoscope of change. And the needs of others could never be forgotten; individual freedom, directed inward, unconnected to the world outside, quickly became meaningless. Least of all could one ignore the needs of a friend, of one who thought only of giving, whose life was already balanced on the razor's edge. One could not betray a trust given freely and without restraint.

Words were the instrument of his craft. But words need not always be spoken.

*

"Okay," Bard said finally. "Break." He unslung the liot, laid it carefully down on a bench, and headed for the dispenser. Around him the remainder of Orpheus did likewise, each in their own way: Daleth and Mistral downed gravis and liot respectively, vanished outside for a micron, reappeared laden with tankards, and settled on the edge of the podium by the flatharp, discussing triad with Tenebrae; Rossignol claimed a quiet corner for her own, curled up into a complex and uncomfortable-looking knot and began to meditate; Pulsar set his batons neatly down side by side and disappeared into the turbocubicle to soak his aching hands in the bucket of iced water kept in readiness for him. Only the Academician remained where he sat at the celesta, his fingers picking out patterns at random from among the keys, the notes falling soft as rainwater, a gentle, undemanding refrain. Negus jumped down from the podium, joined Pulsar in the turbocubicle for a moment to rinse the sweat off his face and hands. Reemerging, he crossed to Bard's side. He helped himself to caffia, watching the singer from the corner of his eye.

"Are you going to tell me?" he finally asked, his voice so low it could hardly be heard over the Academician's noodlings.

Bard turned, hitched himself up onto the table. "I don't have to," he said, "do I? When did I ever have a problem you didn't know about before I did?"

"Serina." The big man swallowed his caffia in one gulp, poured another. "The child."

"And Apollo."

Negus raised a quizzical eyebrow. "He matters?"

"What do you think?"

Negus said nothing for a moment. "I thought you would resent him. Do you not?"

Bard sighed. "Of course I do. But what I owe him … it balances out. It more than balances out." His shoulders lifted, fell, in an attempt at indifference. "Serina and I were history long before the destruction."

"She always knew which side of the sheet to lie, that one," Negus murmured. "The thought of Serina sealing with a warrior is somehow incongruous: married quarters, a military pay voucher, just another officer's wife … I give her full credit for having had the intelligence to realise that, off-planet, things would be different."

Bard gave another shrug. "You never liked her."

"I disliked what she did to you. And I would be more willing to accept the transformation at face value were it not for the fact that the warrior she married is not just any warrior but a Viper pilot, and not just any Viper pilot but a squadron leader and the son of Commander Adama."

"Well," Bard said explosively, "so? So what? Maybe she did latch on to him just because of who he was, because he was in a position where he could take care of her. That doesn't make her some kind of monster. She had Boxey to think of, remember? And for all I know, she might have come round to loving him the way he loved her. He _does_ love her, and he's an intelligent man. He'd have seen through her games, if she tried them out on him."

"As you did?" Negus countered. "Bard, I was there." At the hurt in his friend's eyes he relented a fraction. "You may be right. You, after all, were the one who knew her. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Serina was never the angel of grace that your friend the captain seems to think that she was, and it's no good asking me to think of her that way. I remember the way she left you, without a word, as soon as she had a better offer."

"Yes." Bard's gaze dropped. "I remember it too." Then he looked up at Negus again, his eyes bright with passion. "But I don't want Apollo to know it – you hear what I'm saying? Let him have his memories, okay? After all – it's not what you do believe that matters; it's what you believe you believe, what you need to."

"As you say." Negus finished his caffia, tossed the container into the recycler. "And Boxey?"

Bard's eyes held his. "Boxey is Apollo's son. That's the way it stays."

In the corner, Rossignol unwound herself, stretched, and rose to her feet in one liquid motion, combing out her vermilion hair with her fingers until it haloed her face. "Serina?" she enquired interestedly, fragments of the conversation having evidently intruded upon her concentration. "She went with the warrior, the pretty one?"

Bard's mouth quirked. "Don't ever," he suggested, "call him that to his face. Yes, she did – she married him."

She wrinkled her nose disdainfully. "He looks sensible. Why would he want her?" She added something vituperative in her native Aquarian. " _Chè salopa_ ," she ended darkly.

"Not at all," Bard said firmly. "Just ambitious, and ready to use whatever weapons came to hand. Your double standards are showing, La Rossa: if she'd been a man, you would have admired her." He slid from the table, turning back to the podium. "Okay, everyone, back to work." He picked up the liot, strummed a couple of chords, adjusted the tuning. " _Shelter From the Storm_. One – two – three – four – "

>   
> _Outside the winds howl  
>  Outside the rains fall  
> Across the darkness  
> I hear you calling  
> Come inside:  
> I'll give you shelter from the storm.  
> In the cold and restless night  
> Your light will shine and give me shelter from the storm …_   
> 

*

Bard's throat was raw; he spun the words as though for the first time, and the audience heard them as they had never heard them before. Rossignol leaned in close, closer, her voice weaving in and out of his like the warp and the weft of a tapestry. Pulsar's rhythm gave the music form, a framework for the finished design; he threw his batons spinning into the air and caught them without missing a beat. At the back of the stage Daleth and Mistral, right- and left-handed, stood face to face, mirroring each other's movements as their notes echoed one another, and wove their own corresponding harmonies. Tenebrae shadowed them and, like a shadow, added a subtle new dimension that seemed not quite of this world. And at the celesta the Academician sat quietly, calmly, his hands moving without thought or effort or even, apparently, his awareness across the keyboard as he watched the rest of the band with critical detachment, watching the pattern take shape, as though he himself were not a link in their invisible chain, a thread of gold rippling through the fabric of their rainbow design.

Bard tossed back wet hair from his face, stepped back up to the microphone. "We're gonna take a little break now. We'll be back with you in just a few centons – stay with us!" Somewhere at the back of the specially converted Council Chamber an unseen technician hit a switch and the stage darkened. It broke a spell. The audience, reverently, disbelievingly silent up until then, leaped to their feet almost as one, and the auditorium rang with their applause, their whistles and stamping and cheers, and the inevitable yells of " _Bard!_ " The band members glanced at one another as they jumped down backstage, their faces wreathed in triumphant smiles.

"Did we do it?" Daleth kept asking, over and over, to nobody. "Did we really do it, or what?!"

Rossignol threw her arms impulsively around Bard. "I want to fly!" Negus took her elbow and steered her firmly away.

"You can fly all you like, _after_ the second half." He thrust her toward the curtained-off alcove that served as a dressing room. "Go and shower, unless you want all those men out there to know you sweat." He glanced back at the rest of the band. "That goes for you guys, too."

"How about you?" Pulsar asked, hanging back at the doorway. "You coming?"

Negus indicated Bard with a jerk of his head. "I'll see him settled first." He grinned down at the singer, whose expression was faintly stunned. "I want to make sure he keeps his bootheels on the deck."

"I can't believe it's real," Bard said faintly. "People remember us – so many people – "

"Half the fleet, to be precise," Negus told him.

"Out there?!" Bard's voice held a note of horror.

Negus patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. Concerts had always had the effect of rendering Bard temporarily oblivious to the real world. "Not on this ship. On the video relays. Simultaneous broadcast fleet-wide, remember?"

Bard was frowning as he stripped off his drenched shirt and trousers and stepped into the turbowash. "Half?"

"The other half," Negus said patiently, "are in sleep period." He shut the turbocubicle door. "Now, are you going to be okay by yourself? Think you can find your clothes for the next half?"

"M'm," Bard responded absently. Negus sighed.

"I'll come back. We just want this concert remembered for the _music - !_ "

*

The backstage area was crowded with friends and wellwishers. In the hospitality room the after-concert party was already in full swing.

"Bard – " Apollo looked up from his conversation with Zara, the IFB linkperson, as the singer came into the room. He excused himself and made his way over to him, wading through the throng. "Bard, it's incredible. I can't believe – I keep thinking I'm going to wake up – "

The other man laughed. " _You_ can't believe?! I feel like any moment Chief Tech Ishmael's going to walk in and tell me I'm ten centons late reporting for my shift." He grabbed a tankard from a passing tray. "Listen, is that really me out there, or is it just some guy that looks like me?"

"It'd better be you – the Council's already approved your grant."

"Your father."

"Friends in high places," Apollo said. "But who's going to turn down a full-fleet tour by Orpheus? There'd be riots!"

"Sounded like they were already rioting, back there," Bard observed.

"Yeah. Aren't you glad they're on your side?" He turned, seeing movement at the corner of his vision, smiled a welcome.

"Dad!" Boxey hurtled toward them weaving a complicated course between and around packed adult bodies. Unthinkingly, Bard turned to meet him. And, between one breath and the next, saw in Apollo's white face and huge, shocked eyes what he had done. He was suddenly, absolutely, sober.

The warrior reached mechanically down to touch the child's hair. "Boxey …" he said faintly. His eyes flitted from the child's face to the man's, for the first time acknowledging what he had tried so hard not to see. He drew breath. "Bard – "

Boxey was tugging at the hem of his half-dress cape. "Dad? You okay?"

A buzzer sounded over the intercomm.

"Two centons." Bard shook himself back to the here and now. "I've got a concert to play, Apollo. Catch you later …" He hesitated, knowing he had to go, needing to go; needing to stay. "Wish me luck …?"

Apollo swallowed hard, struggling for breath. "Luck …"

Boxey smiled sunnily, oblivious to the sudden tension in the air. "Good luck, Bard!"

Bard was gone. Boxey too had slipped away, back to whatever vantage point he and his friends had managed to scrounge. Apollo stood still, the room surging around him, deaf and blind to his surroundings.

 _We fool no-one so easily as those who wish to be fooled; we fool no-one as easily as ourselves. Am I such a fool?_

A light hand touched his arm; he jolted.

"Apollo? Are you coming to watch the concert?"

He fought back to the surface, found Cassiopeia's eyes fixed on his. He blinked, nodded.

"Yes … I guess …" He shook his head, disorientated. Cassiopeia reached for his hands, held them.

"What is it?"

"What - ? Oh … I don't know."

"You look," she said seriously, "as though you've just seen a ghost. Have you?"

"In a way." He tried to smile. "But this ghost's alive." Then he burst out, "Cassi, what's the matter with me? Why am I always the last to realise ?"

Her hands tightened reassuringly on his. "There's nothing the matter with you, Apollo. You're just a little slow, that's all. We make allowances because we like you. And," she added, quite serious now, "you like to close your eyes to what you don't want to see every bit as much as the rest of us."

He looked at her, trying to read the thoughts behind her expression. "Did you know?"

She met his eyes openly, but asked cautiously, "Did I know what?"

"That Bard … that he's Boxey's father."

For what seemed a very long time she made no answer, which was all the answer he needed. Then she moved closer, sliding her arms around his shoulders. "Apollo. _You're_ Boxey's father. All the father he knows, all the father he wants. Don't you think he'd say the same? Have you asked him?

He whispered, "No. I – "

 _Haven't. Haven't had the time. Haven't had the courage. Maybe never will. And he thought again, He's all I have!_

She held him tightly for a moment, as though she could sense his thoughts, then stepped back a pace. "Apollo. Try trusting people. Trust Bard to do the right thing. Trust Boxey to make his own decisions." She smiled. "Trust me. Now – shall we go watch the concert?"

*

The stage lights dimmed; the band moved silently away. Only the Academician still remained, his celesta weaving a fragile filigree of delicate tones and half-tones; and Bard, standing still at centre stage, head bowed, a single spotlight spilling his shadow, a pool of dark, about his feet.

The Academician found a chord; pressed it softly. Bard's head lifted.

"Twenty yahren ago," he said. His throat caught; he coughed, and began again. "Twenty yahren ago I was a kid on Libra. Twenty yahren ago I was sixteen, and I had just one dream. Twenty yahren ago I was going to be a Colonial Warrior, a Viper pilot, and I was going to be the one who made the difference.

"Twenty yahren ago I applied for the Academy on Caprica. Twenty yahren ago I was accepted. And twenty yahren ago I found that the dream wasn't enough. Not enough to make a Warrior. Not enough to fly …

"Twenty yahren ago I found that, no matter how much you might dream of a thing, if it's not meant for you then it won't come. Twenty yahren ago I failed my final medical exam, and I thought my world had ended.

"Twenty yahren ago I crawled home, praying that no-one would see me, that no-one would blame me, no-one laugh at me or, worst of all, pity me. Twenty yahren ago I sat down and I tried to put the way I felt into words.

"Twenty yahren ago, I wrote a song …" The murmur from the audience rose, drowning him out for a micron. "I wrote it out of feelings, not experience, and maybe I'd write it differently now. But I don't think so. Because twenty yahren on, I'm still singing. And I'm not alone.

"I'm going to sing it for you tonight. For you, and for me, and for all of us. But most of all tonight, I'm singing this for my friend – " He threw a brief glance across into the wings; Apollo, standing in the shadows, felt Cassiopeia's fingers tighten around his. "For my real good friend, Apollo. Because he gave me back something I thought was gone forever. Because he showed me the way when I thought I was lost. Because, if not for him, then none of this – " He gestured outward, around the hall. "None of this would be happening now. And, mainly, just because. Because even though I failed, he didn't. He hung on to his dream. He became the one. The one who makes the difference."

He stepped back. The Academician wove his notes into one final, perfect pattern and was still, his hands poised. There was, for a moment, perfect silence.

>   
> _Incandescent, luminous  
>  The suns that shine in other skies  
> On worlds our feet will never touch  
> A light not meant for human eyes.  
> Infinite, intransient  
> They burn, the beacons of the night  
> And, moths into the candle flame  
> We break ourselves against their light …_   
> 

The band drifted back, caught up the notes and made them each their own. Rossignol's voice rose, high and pure, a shimmering backdrop to the melody.

They took the words, the people of the fleet, and they gave them back to him, multiplied a thousandfold. They sang; the last, lost fragments of humanity, they sang of life and hope and the promise of a future, of a vision to lead them from the shadowlands in which they dwelt, from the jaws of Hades. From the Underworld. They sang, and their voices were as one voice: the voice of humankind, the voice of everyman.

Only the warrior in the wings stood dumb, watching as if in a dream, unheeding of the tears in his eyes, the comforting arm around his shoulder. Apollo watched, silent; he had no need to sing. He, as every warrior, knew the song too well: lived it, breathed it, would do so until the day he died.

>   
> _Wings of passion, wings of pain  
>  Dreams fade, but still return again  
> Our lives are shaped by fantasy  
> On wings of gold, forever free …_   
> 

And again, the words that once had been carved on warriors' deathstones:

>   
> _Wings of silver, wings of fire  
>  That blaze, that burn, my heart's desire  
> A path of glory through the sky  
> A vision that will never die …_   
> 

Slower now, quieter, fading as the dying embers of an ebbing life are extinguished by the void of eternity:

>   
> _A hope that death cannot deny  
>  We live to fly, oh, lords, we live to fly …_   
> 

Almost a whisper now, caught deep in the throat, like a sob:

>   
> _We live …  
>  Oh, lords, we live  
> To fly …_   
> 

*

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. The party rioted and swirled all around them, unnoticed.

"I was going to," Bard said. "The first night I came to your quarters. I meant to."

Apollo looked up at him, eyes wide, defenceless. "And?"

"And," Bard said, "within the space of ten centons you gave me at least as many good reasons why I should say nothing." He felt the other man's silence like a tangible thing and said, gently, "Apollo. I'm his parent. You're his father. I'm not going to try and take him from you. Besides – do you really think I could?" He smiled. "The only thing I _am_ planning to take from you," he added, and the smile broadened into a grin of pure triumph, "is your childminder. You don't begrudge me that, at least, do you?"

Apollo moved stiffly, feeling as though he had travelled very far in the last few centons. "Would it make any difference it I did?" he said; reflected a moment, as words and actions that had made no sense at the time suddenly fell into place. "Oh, lords," he said, with deep and bitter feeling. "Please, say it's not so. Am I the last to know _again?!_ "

***

>   
> _The winds of change blow down the road tonight  
>  Blow across my face, fill my eyes with ashes  
> And smother out the light  
> Well, I guess you were bound to be leaving  
> Ah, but that doesn't stop me from grieving  
> As I stand and watch you go.  
> Won't you turn around, give me a second chance?  
> Don't turn the page, don't end our story  
> Without a second glance  
> The wind's blowing cold down the street  
> And my heart's growing cold in defeat  
> Still, there's something you should know.  
> I'm nobody's hero, you know it's true  
> But everything I am and do, it's all because of you –  
> You're the one who shapes me, the one who makes me  
> Recreates me in all that you do.  
> Oh, darling,  
> Don't walk away, don't leave me standing here alone.  
> Don't dazzle your eyes with the glittering lies  
> The empty promises of the unknown.  
> What more can they give you than I could?  
> Will they love you the same way that I would?  
> Can you make it on your own …?_   
> 

***


End file.
